Kemp
by Harvey Goldner
With his fine blond hair streaming in the wind
from a noisy electric fan,
Kemp reads in his metaphysical text
that the seat of the human soul
is probably the pineal gland,
tucked under the brain, and not,
as Kemp is convinced,
a golden throne on the dark side
of the silvery moon.
This bit of misinformation from the
smug and ignorant book
so pisses off Kemp
that he flings it through the open door of his
gloomy Memphis apartment,
and it lands open
on the burnt grass.
Then Kemp gets up from his
sleazy chair
and goes outside into the heat, the harsh
light of the August afternoon.
When Kemp bends over to pick it up,
the book speaks
in a small, sweet voice: “Kemp,
I baked you a little cake.”
Kemp stands amid sunshine,
holding the book to his breast,
as if it were a nursing baby, and then
Kemp starts to weep.
Harvey lives in Seattle. His poems have appeared in The Adirondack Review, Bellowing Ark, Chelsea, Curious Rooms, Exhibition, Exquisite Corpse, 4th Street, Iota, Poetry Midwest, Puerto del Sol, Rattle, Shampoo Poetry, The Sun, Willard & Maple, and elsewhere. A chapbook, Her Bright Bottom, was recently released by Spankstra Press.
